A report that seeks to measure the impact of DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks on affected companies reveals that the average cost per hour of such an attack is $40,000, with half of the companies surveyed experiencing losses of more than $500,000 / €402,000 during the event.
The study was conducted by Incapsula, a provider of DDoS protection solutions, across 270 companies in the US and Canada, across a range of industry, with each company employing between 250 and 10,000 people.
According to the information from the organizations participating in the survey, 49% of the recorded DDoS attacks lasted from 6 to 24 hours. These are the cases where the cost estimate is on average $ 40,000 for each hour of the attack. 15% of the respondents stated costs of more than $ 100,000 per hour. There were also cases where the attack lasted several days or even more than a week.
According to Incapsula, the first half of the year saw a 350% increase in large-scale DDoS incidents, which are increasingly powerful and long-lasting. These are designed to exhaust available network bandwidth, resulting in service disruption. Losses related to DDoS attacks are not assessed strictly from an incident perspective but include the overall impact on the company.
The costs aren’t limited to the IT team – they also have a major impact on areas such as security and risk management, customer service, and sales. In addition, most of the respondents who had been targeted by such attacks (87%) also faced other consequences, such as loss of customer trust and loss of intellectual property, the report says. In more than half of the cases examined, hardware and software had to be replaced, which translates into additional costs.
Most companies don't take measures against DDoS attacks
For a company to return to normal after a DDoS attack, in most cases, it can take months and sometimes even years. What is certain is the fact that these incidents have a long-term impact. When it comes to incident management, it is worrying that many of the respondents did not have the necessary plans and solutions for defense against DDoS attacks. Only 43% of the respondents had taken relevant measures.
